An Airdrie woman bitten by a bat confirmed to have rabies is reported to have sought treatment and was found not to be infected with the rabies virus.
According to a Facebook post from Heartland Veterinary Clinic Ltd. on June 13, Airdrie Bylaw brought the bat into their clinic a week prior. According to the post, the bat was euthanized and sent out to be tested for rabies – a test that came back positive.
Airdrie Bylaw declined to comment, instead referring us to Alberta Fish and Wildlife.
According to an Alberta Health Service (AHS) publication, rabies is a serious infection caused by a virus that affects the central nervous system. The virus is rare in humans and can cause inflammation of the brain.
AHS Medical Officer of Health in the Calgary zone Judy MacDonald said unknown animal encounters need to be reported to public health.
“Somebody who’s had an encounter with an animal, wild or domestic, that they don’t know, where there’s been a bite or a scratch or some other way that saliva has gotten into non-intact skin, then they should be calling their local public health clinic to report it,” she said.
“We need to investigate all of those kinds of situations and determine if there is a risk of rabies and then we can make the appropriate recommendation for prevention, which is vaccine.”
While human rabies is extremely rare it is also virtually untreatable once contracted.
“Rabies is universally fatal,” MacDonald said. “Once someone has been exposed to rabies virus, and it does take some time for symptoms to show up, depending on where the bite happened, then there’s very little that can be done.”
MacDonald’s advice is to avoid contact with unknown wild or domestic animals to avoid the risk of exposure.
“If they do get a bite or scratch or some kind of contact with saliva…they should report it to public health, because we will be able to review what happened and determine whether they should receive rabies prevention vaccine,” she said.
According to MacDonald, Alberta Health Services investigates more than 1,500 animal exposures in the Calgary zone each year.
“We can prevent it (and) we do prevent it very well with the vaccines that we give,” she added.
The Alberta Environment and Parks website states, “The prevalence of diseases in bats in Alberta is extremely low and any risks to humans easily can be avoided. Although bats should be handled with caution, the widespread eradication of bats to eliminate a human health hazard is thoroughly unjustified in Alberta.”
For more information, visit aep.alberta.ca/fish-wildlife, select “Human-Wildlife Conflict” and then select “Bats.”
